Containers made from fibreboard are used widely in many industries. For example, fibreboard containers are used to ship products that are moist or packed in ice such as fresh produce or fresh seafood. It is known that when such containers take up moisture, they lose strength. To minimize or avoid this loss of strength, moisture-resistant shipping containers are required.
Moisture-resistant containers used to date have commonly been prepared by saturating container blanks with melted wax after folding and assembly. Wax-saturated containers cannot be effectively recycled and must generally be disposed of in a landfill. In addition, wax adds a significant amount of weight to the container blank, e.g., the wax can add up to 40% by weight to the container blank.